Phd Student
Politecnico di Torino
Dipartimento di Idraulica, Trasporti
e Infrastrutture Civili
C.so Duca degli Abruzzi, 24
10129, Torino, Italy
Tel.: +39-011-090-5684
Fax: +39-011-090-5698
ines.oueslati@polito.it
Description of the Research Activity
Spatial distribution of soil hydraulic properties:
This research aims at quantifying some hydrological processes such as runoff through the identification of physical and chemical soil properties (texture, structure, bulk density, organic matter…) that are in direct relationship with the hydraulic parameters mainly soil moisture and hydraulic conductivity. The main issue is to find tools and methodologies that can predict and generate an accurate spatial distribution of the soil properties.
Those tools include the use of pedotransfer functions that aims to predict hard to measure soil properties from primary soil data (texture, porosity,..) and the digital soil mapping that can be difined as the creation, and population of spatial soil information systems by the use of field and laboratory observational methods coupled with enviornmental factors (corpan model: climate variables (c), vegetation and land use (o), relief (r), parent material (p), age (a) and spatial coordinate (n)) using statistical and geostatistitical techniques.
Actual activity deals with the prediction of the top soil organic matter in forestal soils situated in Piemonte and its interraction with the existing vegetation.
Future issues that can be devoloped are:
– Optimization of soil sampling when predicting soil properties
– Spatial Prediction of saturated soil moisture
– Uncertainty in soil properties prediction